What's in Red Bull?

From a quick glance at the Red Bull website, one could easily be forgiven for having no clue what Red Bull is.  Their homepage reads like a compendium of “extreme” ethos, offering links like “athletes and teams”, “world series” and “music and culture”.  There are photos of mixed martial artists, videos of racing biplanes, music modules and an aggregation of stories about video games and upcoming “extreme” events.  There is no mention, however, of an energy drink called “Red Bull”.

This blog now has more product shots of
Red Bull than you will find on their homepage.

For that, you have to click on a small and unobtrusive tab marked “products” whereupon you will be whisked away to a very scientific and sanitary looking page that will give you the “facts” about their staple product.  They use the page to fulfill legal requirements about ingredient transparency and to combat the myriad of online myths about their company.  Where there is room to spare, they chock it full of promises worded with careful precision to suggest but never legally guarantee the orchestra of benefits contained in a can of Red Bull.

Wings, sure, but can it give you bleu cheese dressing?

If the company is to be believed, in addition to “giving you wings”, their energy drink can:

-       Increase performance

-       Increase concentration and reaction speed

-       Improve vigilance

-       Improve emotional status

-       Stimulate metabolism

At a glance that seems more like a magical potion than a beverage, but upon closer examination you’ll note that only one of those claims even makes logical sense.  “Increasing performance” is so vague it cannot possibly be tested.  Improving vigilance is even more laughable.  Improving emotional status is a pseudo-scientific way of saying “makes you happy” and it’s hard to imagine anything you consume that wouldn’t in some way or another “stimulate metabolism”.  This leaves only the claim that in increases concentration and reaction speed, but that could be said of any caffeinated beverage.

Pictured: Increased vigilance.

So what does Red Bull do?  In hopes of finding out more, we can click on the “Ingredients” tab and it will lay out the gritty details of what goes in every can.  Luckily for us, it’s an annotated list that provides plenty of the grandiose claims we saw on the “benefits” tab we just left so we can start to see where all the magical powers come from.

To my surprise, there was no eye-of-newt or wing-of-bat.  Instead, there is this simple formula:

-       Taurine

-       Glucuronolactone

-       Caffeine

-       B-Group Vitamins

-       Sucrose

-       Glucose

I must admit that my skepticism of Red Bull’s claims comes from a completely unscientific place.  Taurine earned its name by being first isolated in ox-bile and that’s far too close to being bull crap not to raise an alarm in my head.  Despite the convenient factoids that Red Bull provided, I took it upon myself to do a bit of further research on their claimed benefits.

 #1) Taurine 

Before we examine what taurine is, let me spend a few words on what it isn’t.  Taurine is not a poison and it does not come from bull testicles despite rampant claims to the contrary.  Taurine is a naturally occurring amino acid that is contained in the tissues of many mammals, including humans.  It is an essential part of digestion, which is why it is chiefly found in bile.

To Red Bull’s credit, the taurine they use is artificially synthesized and not extracted from bile as some alarmist websites claim.  These same sites claim that taurine is poisonous, which is frightening if true considering that it is already in your body from the moment that you’re born.

Pictured: Taurine (Added to give
the illusion of educational value)

Those claims are only slightly more ridiculous than the claims made by the energy drink companies.  Red Bull points out that in times of stress or physical exertion your body can lose taurine, implying (but not saying) that replacing it by drinking Red Bull would help to speed up your body’s natural detoxification process.

The problem is that there is no science to support this declaration.  While there is no definitive answer as to what the dietary benefits of taurine are, there is every indication that it is completely neutral.  Your body produces taurine in a highly regulated way and there is simply nothing to suggest that your body will supplement its own production with taurine that it is added through an energy drink.

It seems counterintuitive to say that consuming taurine does not increase the amount of taurine in your system, but this is probably true.  Let us use brain tissue as an analogy.  We are certain that gray matter is essential to cognitive function, but eating brains won’t make you any smarter.

The jury is still out on taurine and probably will be for some time.  As of yet, no respectable study has suggested on any level that there is any benefit whatsoever to consuming taurine.

 #2) Glucuronolactone 

In addition to being really hard to say five times fast, glucuronolactone is a carbohydrate that was not developed as a chemical weapon by the US during Vietnam.  I feel that it’s necessary to mention that because there are a number of urban legends to the contrary.  Red Bull lauds it as a key component in detoxification and offers cryptically that it “support[s] the body in eliminating waste substances from the body”.

Another beverage that "support[s] the
body in eliminating waste substances..."

Again, these claims are high on ambiguity and low on empirical evidence.  While it is certainly true that glucuronolactone is essential to the digestive process, there is again no sound science that supports the notion that supplementing the body’s natural supply through diet will have any effect.

Glucuronolactone is already present in your diet in trace amounts, but a can of Red Bull will provide you with something like 500 times as much as you normally consume so it is probably best if this addition does not have a real effect.  There are no definitive studies on the effects, dangers or benefits of it, so any claim made about its consumption would be careless and speculative.

 #3) Caffeine 

Here we find the source of the “buzz” Red Bull aficionados love.  Red Bull contains about three times as much caffeine as an equivalent volume in Coke or Pepsi.  The can will tell you that it contains about as much caffeine as a cup of coffee, which is true if you take your coffee pretty strong.  Those who drink both Red Bull and coffee will point out that there must be some effect from the taurine and glucuronolactone because they get a much more potent buzz from a can of Red Bull than they do from getting the same amount of caffeine from their coffee.

Drink Caffeine!

The real difference maker there is the speed at which you consume a cold drink compared to a hot drink.  With coffee you generally take the caffeine in over a longer period of time and thus it lacks the punch of a hastily chugged Red Bull.

Caffeine does have a number of physical and psychological benefits but it contains equivalent dangers.  No respectable medical professional would recommend a high caffeine diet to deal with chronic fatigue, but that is precisely what Red Bull offers.  It is especially careless that they so heavily market their product toward aspiring athletes given that high caffeine intake can be extremely dangerous when dehydrated.

 #4) B-Group Vitamins 

Apparently the Red Bull folks figured they needed something familiar and healthy sounding to stick in under caffeine and B vitamins are a cheap addition.  Even massive intake of B vitamins has only the slightest effect (if any) on the human body.  A whole industry has cropped up to save us from our delusion of being vitamin-deficient and Red Bull found welcome space on the bandwagon.

The truth is that the negligible amount of B vitamins in a can of Red Bull has absolutely no effect on your health.  All but a trace amount will pass in your urine without being absorbed and what little remains will have no measurable effect.  The same would be true even if there was a tenfold increase in the volume of vitamins Red Bull contained.

 #5) Glucose and Sucrose 

Here, we finally find the source of all that energy that Red Bull promises.  The caffeine gives you the buzz and the dubious increase in “vigilance”, but the actual boost of energy comes from good old-fashioned sugar.

A single serving of 8.3 ounces contains about 27 grams of sugar (3.25g per oz).  Compare that with the 39 grams of sugar in a 12 ounce serving of Coca-Cola (3.25g per oz.) and you’ll see the source of Red Bull’s ephemeral energy.  There is, of course, nothing else in the product that could remotely be claimed as a source of energy.  Red Bull’s propaganda only claims that the other ingredients aid in detoxification so sugar can be the only wing-giving component.

Pictured: Energy

Of course, if Red Bull admitted that all of the energy and vigilance came only from the sugar and the caffeine they could hardly justify charging three times the cost of a soda.  It would also be damn hard to make the claim that caffeine and sugar are “appreciated throughout the world by top athletes, busy professionals, active students and drivers on long journeys”.  In fact, in light of the true source of the energy it would seem careless and even dangerous to make such claims.  None of us would be comforted by the thought of drivers on long journeys relying on sugar and caffeine for their vigilance.  Despite that, Red Bull’s website specifically states that its product is great for “overworked taxi drivers”.

If only they had Red Bull in '76...

Just as careless are the claims that Red Bull is great for athletes.  Drinking high amounts of caffeine and sugar during exercise is dangerous in that it does not hydrate the body.  Instead, the high sugar content will simply exacerbate the loss of fluids that was already taking place.  Because of this effect and the profiteering claims, several deaths have been linked to the consumption of Red Bull.  The company has since backed away from the claims that athletes in the midst of intense physical exertion should consume their beverage.  Still, they happily proclaim that Red Bull is used by “surfers in the summer and snowboarders in the winter”.

 Conclusion: 

Red Bull is not a slow-acting poison, but it is also not an “energy drink”.  It’s a can of soda with a few alt-med placebos added to increase the perceived value.  A proper study of the effects of Red Bull and its constituent ingredients has not yet been performed.  A truly scientific survey would test the actual product against a number of controls that eliminated one of the main ingredients.  You would have to test (a) Red Bull against (b) Red Bull with no taurine, (c) Red Bull with no glucuronolactone, (d) Red Bull with no sugar, (e) Red Bull with no caffeine and (f) something with none of those ingredients that still tasted like carbonated Nyquil.

This study would be relatively expensive as it would require large samples in each of the six categories and separate studies would have to be conducted to test each claim.  That being said, the founders of the company are among the 300 wealthiest people on the planet and if they had any desire to find out exactly what their product did, they could fund the study with the money in their couch cushions.

The kind of couch cushions you might find
gold doubloons in. 

There is an obvious reason why they don’t.  There is no incentive in proving these claims so long as people seem willing to accept them without evidence.  Their lawyers have carefully crafted the claims to insure against litigation and so long as people don’t start dropping dead from drinking the stuff they’re insulated.  Such a study could and probably would show that there is no effect from Red Bull that couldn’t be achieved by chugging an iced coffee and if that’s proven then their multi-billion dollar industry could potentially dry up tomorrow.

This goes beyond typical corporate greed.  If a pharmaceutical company came out with a product that it claimed gave you energy and increased your “performance”, we would be outraged if they refused to do studies sufficient to prove those claims.  We should be no less vigilant with any company that produces a consumable product.

A number of countries have banned Red Bull because of the dearth of scientifically credible validation of their claimed benefits and assurances of safety.  While a few of these bans have been lifted, there are still a number of questions about the safety of the product and what constitutes too much.  Because no recommended daily allowances have been established for things like taurine and glucuronolactone it is hard to say how much one has to consume before they risk adverse health effects.

Pictured: Adverse health effects.

While a number of exaggerated assertions have been made about the dangers of energy drinks, not all of the warnings come from alarmism.  At best, Red Bull is no better than a caffeinated soda when it comes to providing energy and the can of soda has the advantage of being both cheaper and better tasting.

Red Bull has developed a worldwide customer base that will not be swayed by a simple lack of scientific evidence.  They drink Red Bull, they get energy and they know that it is a different type of energy than they get from drinking a can of Pepsi.  As unscientific a method as this is, it’s all that some people need, which is why the founders of Red Bull are able to make billions in profit by adding something they found in ox-bile to a can of soda.

Aaron Davies

www.blognoscor.blogspot.com

I chose to pick on Red Bull exclusively in this piece, but there are hundreds of other energy drinks out there making equally glib and baseless claims.  Red Bull is the biggest, but it is not the worst.  Look for a future blog that will spread the cynicism more evenly across the whole energy drink industry.

Finding the Good in the Bad

I must admit that I’ve neglected my blog for the last several days.  With family in town for the holidays and a King’s ransom in leftovers to eat it’s been hard to find the time.  However, a reflection occurred to me last night as I was talking with my niece that seemed worth sharing.

First, a bit of back story:

On January 25^th of 1987, I cut my left index finger off.  I recall the date exactly as I managed to do it about halfway through the Superbowl.  My father was forced to miss the last half of the blowout to escort me to the hospital so that I could have the newly liberated digit reattached.

I suppose that if I were in the habit of fixing blame I might fault my grandfather who took it upon himself to buy my brother and I a set of wood carving X-acto knives for Christmas.  While I can see the appeal in gifting a 10 and 12 year old with a myriad of various razor-sharp cutting utensils, it does seem a tad careless by today’s standard.  I might also toss a little blame into my father’s corner since he allowed my brother and I to keep said knives in our bedroom even after he cut his hand with them so severely that he had to have several stitches.

Of course, the lion’s share of the blame belongs in my own lap.  The slip of the knife occurred while I was trying to whittle away just enough of a two by four to make it possible to easily karate-chop it in half later.  The plan was to mesmerize my friends by presenting them the uncut side of the board before I head butted it into two equal halves.

In retrospect, I’m not sure what this was meant to accomplish.  I suppose that it didn’t occur to me that these friends would almost certainly want to see an encore afterward and I had no intention of boring out several boards.

Luckily I didn’t have to concern myself with that outcome.  Midway through the project the knife slipped and dug into my poorly placed finger, cleaving it nearly in two.  I calmly screamed and ran through the house spurting blood in a telltale trail of careless stupidity behind me.  By the time I reached the living room I’d managed to scare my sisters into joining the chorus of horrific cries.

I recall watching the last quarter of the game from the hospital waiting room while I poked at my finger and marveled at the fact that I couldn’t feel a thing as I did so.  I recall the surgeries that I underwent in order to reattach all the nerves, sweat glands and blood vessels.  Two surgeries and a series of smaller and smaller casts were to follow, as were decades of grief from my father for having had to miss the last half of the big game.

Once my finger was successfully reattached I had no feeling in it whatsoever.  In an effort to prove this to my friends, I held it against a stove burner for a few minutes while they winced and yelled.  I was so devoid of feeling that I didn’t bother moving my finger until I actually smelled burning flesh.  Of course, the following morning I had a blister on my fingertip large enough to call another finger.

The other side effect, of course, was a serious loss of fine motor skill in that finger.  Even now I favor my left middle finger (I typed finger without using the affected finger at all, for example).  Among the many things my doctor recommended to counteract this loss of coordination was that I take up some new hobbies that would involve fine movements of that digit.

My mother insisted that I followed the doctor’s recommendations and after a bit of debate I elected to learn to play piano, to touch-type and to juggle.  At first these seemed like chores, but as with any talent, once I developed a bit of proficiency with them they were the source of some of my fondest distractions.

At the time and for years to come, it seemed that the act of unwittingly hacking off my finger was all bad.  It is easy to imagine myself confronted by a genie in my youth and using one of my wishes to go back in time and transform my X-acto knives into silly putty.  My finger is kind of grossly deformed now and to this day poor circulation leaves it freezing in even modestly cold temperatures.  I spent several months in a itching, stinking, uncomfortable cast and spent far too many weekends in doctor’s offices or recovering from anesthetic.

All that being said, as I look back on it now, it is likely the most significant action in my life.  Had I not whacked off my finger, I’d likely never have learned to play piano, which is my favorite emotional outlet.  I may never have developed the typing proficiency that I have now, which might have robbed me of the joy of writing.  I almost certainly would have never learned to juggle, which is how I’ve made my living for the last ten years or so.

Some have accused me of being too cynical in this blog and I suppose that’s a fair assessment.  While I reserve the right to return to my disparaging ways in the future, today I want to reflect on how much good can come from a bad situation.  In the moment it is useless to try to value the events around you.  Without the perspective that only time can provide one might mistake a blessing for a curse or a curse for a blessing.

Like many of the errors and mistakes we make in life, cutting my finger off at the age of 10 defined me as an adult.  It opened my eyes to things I might never have otherwise seen.  It brought me to the three greatest sources of joy in my life (that I’m not married too) and it saved my father the trouble of watching the horrendous blow-out that came in the second half of Superbowl XXI.  As cliché as it sounds, I can’t imagine who I would be now had it not been for this single, accidental and horribly stupid act.

While I certainly wouldn’t encourage anyone to cut off their fingers, I feel that we could all stand to be reminded from time to time that the greatest outcomes can arise from the direst circumstances.  Many of us sat around on Thursday and talked about the many things we’re thankful for and I might be the only one who said “I’m thankful I cut my finger off when I was 10.”

There are two morals to the story, of course:  Firstly, blessings often take the guise of tragedies.  Secondly, always cut away from the fingers…

Aaron Davies

www.blognoscor.blogspot.com

And I promise to get back to being unabashedly cynical in the next entry.

5 Stages of Thanksgiving Dinner

Thanksgiving is as American as a holiday can get.  We celebrate our merciless colonialism through unapologetic gluttony while watching a sport nobody else in the world cares about.  Somehow, despite the awkward reunions, the screaming children, the messes, the chaos and the overall insanity, it manages to be a day that we look forward to all year.  All of the negatives are easily balanced out by the promise of forcing cool-whip laden pumpkin pie into an esophagus that is actually bruised from fourth helping of turkey.

An appetizer for the pie.

And thus I present the familiar cycle of Thanksgiving dinner.  On one hand it is a celebration and a feast.  On the other hand it is a brutal attrition where we must all come face to face with our id and admit that we are powerless before it.

 Stage One: Denial 

Thanksgiving Dinner starts before the places are all set and the kids are all wrangled to the table.  It begins the first time you convince yourself that a particular morsel doesn’t count.  It might be a tray of deviled eggs that looks asymmetrical.  It might be a meatball in danger of falling off the plate.  You might need to sample the stuffing just to make sure it’s ready for human consumption.

Of course none of this counts.  You ate light leading up to the festivities and surely a small sample of all the goodness to come can’t be counted toward your actual caloric intake for the day.  The meter doesn’t start running until somebody says grace.

 Stage Two: Anger 

Grace is said, thanks are given, the turkey is carved and the “pass the blank” ritual begins.  Trays are passed overhead, silverware clangs, condiments and spices are applied liberally and gravy, sweet delicious gravy is slathered over everything in a steaming brown pool of deliciousness.

But there are protocols and they act against you.  There are two classes of food on the table.  One consists of all the good stuff; the turkey, the stuffing, the sweet potato casserole, the mashed potatoes, the buttermilk biscuits and the weird thing that only you like.  The other is all the weird crap that grandma and aunt Bethany bring; fruit that’s been Han-Soloed into a Jello-mold, 9-bean salad, something gross with something grosser stuffed into it and pasta salad that has a sort of neon coloration.

Etiquette demands that you treat both classes of food the same.  You’re more or less obligated to take at least a bit of every dish and that damnable spinach-loaf is taking up valuable real estate that could be holding more stuffing.  There’s also a taboo about heaping eight spoons full of mashed potatoes onto your plate on the first go-round.  Modesty thwarts your attempt at gluttony and you take economic portions for the first plate.

 Stage Three: Bargaining 

After the first plate, nobody is paying attention and there are no more illusions of restraint.  If you ate the green bean casserole the first time through you’re allowed to fill your second plate with nothing but the good stuff.  You’re also under no commitment to actually finish everything this time around so you can take a few extra collard greens just to cement your spot in grandma’s will.

But just as the social limitations start to melt, new ones arise.  Your stomach, it seems, is finite.  You’ve already devoured as much food as you do in the average 24-hour period, but you’ve got plans for your small intestine and they don’t include it quitting early.  If you can mow through seconds fast enough you might be able to do a nothing-but-stuffing third course but that will never happen if you have to slow down for trivial things like chewing.  You can already see uncle Mark eyeballing the last two deviled eggs and you’ll be damned if he’s going to get them without a fight.

It is here that digestive diplomacy begins.  You reason that since your stomach stretches it should be able to fit in a few more helpings.  After all, if that little Chinese guy can eat 100 hotdogs in a sitting you should at least be able to polish off the rest of the mac and cheese.  You’ll try to convince your stomach of this as you continue to shovel more and more food between your aching cheeks.

If you glance around at this point, you will see that everyone is eating at the same begrudging pace.  At this point it is less like you’re all celebrating and more like you’ve been sentenced to eat.  Jaws and tongues will give out long before brains will give in and you will witness a subtle downshift in mastication speeds.  You will beg your body to allow you one more biscuit and it will eventually concede.

 Stage Four: Depression 

Now begins the waddle of shame.  Any other day of the year you would risk being forever ostracized as a rapacious, corpulent hedonist but today you are with your kind.  You’re not sure if you unbuttoned your pants or if the button just gave up at some point, but either way they’re no longer fastened.  You marvel at the untamed greed that you didn’t know you possessed as you crash back into the sofa.

You’re eyes make a valiant but futile effort to remain focused on the world around you, but fatigue is setting in and you’re stomach is making angry, hateful sounds.  There are kids screaming and something breaking upstairs but you don’t care.  Nothing seems to matter as much as absolute immobility.

You hope that sleep will come quickly so you won’t be forced to spend any more time reflecting on your reckless disregard for reason.  You know now that you should have listened t your body the first time it suggested you slow down.  You know now that the fourth helping of cranberry was over doing it.  You look back at the ruins of the table and wonder how eating all that stuff ever seemed like a good idea.

And just as your eyes shut and the outside world fades away, a single syllable brings you back.  It echoes in your ears and somehow drowns out all that nonsense about how you should have listened to your stomach.  It blinds you to the pain of your insatiable mulishness and numbs you to the zeppelin-level bloating in your gut.  The single word hangs in the air and suddenly you find yourself waddling back into the lion’s den following the promise of pie.

 Stage Five: Acceptance 

The array of deserts forces a moment of reflection.  Can you learn a lesson and ignore it in such quick succession?  You wonder if a person’s digestive tract is physically capable of performing a coupe de grace and when you determine that it isn’t, you grab a plate and load it up with pie.

This is where Einstein gets involved.  You know that you’re still full, but you’re less full than you were a few minutes ago and relatively speaking, your hungry.  It’s not actual hunger, but rather a level of satiety several strata below the one you peaked at.  You mistakenly believe that this means that you can force down three slices of pie without consequence.

It only takes a few bites to shatter this fantasy and within seconds you’re in agony once more but it doesn’t matter.  You’ve been looking forward to that pumpkin pie since before the Lion’s were losing and no amount of pain is going to stop you now.  It doesn’t matter that you’re not enjoying it now because you know that you should.  At this point it isn’t about taste or nourishment, it’s about being comprehensive.  There is food and it is uneaten and you are on a mission.

Acceptance settles in as you move on to the Dutch Apple and for a brief moment gone is the grandiose notion of you as a moderate, restrained diner.  You are a human goldfish.  You will eat until they take the food away and no threat of hemorrhaging will stop you.  You are insatiable.  You’re appetite knows no bounds.  You are a voracious consumer motivated by pure appetitive cravings with no regard for health or temperance.

You are America.

Happy Turkey Day everybody!  Don’t forget to breath.

Aaron Davies

www.blognoscor.blogspot.com

8 Stages of Arguing With a Conspiracy Theorist

Before we delve into the breakdown that this title promises, we should begin by defining our terms.  What exactly is a conspiracy theorist?  I should temper the definition by remembering that there are conspiracies and they abound.  The government is pillaging your freedom; corporate America is actively trying to control your mind; Congress is filled with crooked liars and Big Brother is watching you (and when you go to the airport he’s looking at your junk).

That being said, the “conspiracy theorist” that I refer to in the title is a unique and enigmatic creature that has elevated the true conspiracies that align against him to ridiculous and often comical proportions.  It’s not enough that levels of American defense were criminally negligent on 9/11; there has to be a vast and far-reaching conspiracy that implicates virtually every governmental representative that you’ve ever heard of.  It’s not enough that the government is hiding cutting edge technology; it has to come from the space aliens they are in league with.  It’s not enough that a group of corporate interests are exerting an unforgivable amount of control over our “democratic” government; this group has to wear black robes and align themselves with ancient pagan gods.

Sometimes, they're easy to spot.

And while we’re defining the terms of the title, let me clear up what I mean by “arguing” as well.  The type of conspiracy theorists of whom I speak are not the kind of person anyone can really argue with.  You can talk to them and they will respond with words that are neatly bundled in sentences, but there will be no attempt to use demonstrable facts in order to strengthen a hypothesis.  There will be no movement toward the center.  There will be no logical connection between points and counter-points.  You will communicate with them and interject occasional notes of logical fallacy, but it will be for your own amusement only.  There will be no argument.  What does transpire will probably be something like this:

 Stage One: Concurrence 

Discussions with conspiracy theorists start the same as conversations with regular people.  There is no legal requirement that these people be labeled and so you as the casual inquisitor have no way of knowing the hornet’s nest you are in danger of disturbing.  The discussion will likely begin as would any other.  When it takes its first turn toward absurdity, odds are that you won’t even notice.

The first signpost will be innocuous enough.  You or he will likely begin by expressing some fairly common opinion and some fairly well establish egregious behavior by some fairly communally disliked group.  It could be an innocent remark on the invasiveness of TSA screenings, some general condemnation of campaign finance, a denunciation of a recent Supreme Court decision or (and God help you if it is) any mention of any relevant historical occurrence ever in the history of time.

Directed by Stanley Kubrik

The conspiracy theorist will begin with something small and soon it will snowball into a maelstrom of madness.  Note that thus far I’ve referred to our hypothetical antagonist as “he”.  I’m not simply succumbing to the language’s inherent sexism.  He will be a he.

 Stage Two: The Reveal 

The transition will be invisible and swift.  One moment you will both be agreeing that there is too much money intertwined with American political campaigns.  You will be formulating some comparison with various European systems in your head when all of a sudden your conversational partner will blurt out something like, “And it’s all just a way to distract us while NASA tests their sun spot technology” or “And notice that the election cycles always correspond with the quarter points of the Incan calendar.”

When the reveal comes, it will usually manifest in a way that you never saw coming.  Your brain is still busy doing the math on how the hell he got from one to the other and as it strains to do so, he is expounding on it.  Each new sentence draws you further and further from the familiar dimension and deeper into a vast network of nonsense and pareidolia.  By the time you can think to say “what?” he has already invoked the Bilderberg Group, the G8 summit and the Rothschild family.

The Rothschild Family: Domineering the
future of seemingly random events since 1743.

Eventually, it will be your turn to respond and when it is, he will likely earn a blank stare.  He will be on the fence about this.  You might be awestruck by the wisdom he just revealed, or you could be a doubter so ensconced by the “official story” that you’re calling his explanation of the world into question.  Whatever your expression or his interpretation of its meaning, his next statement will contain a telltale two word preamble:

 Stage Three: “No, Seriously…” 

It’s usually around this utterance that you realize what you’re dealing with.  Up until then you reserve the hopeful notion that he is joking or satirizing the more extreme misinformation you’ve seen online.  When he utters these words it will be with conviction.  He will somehow manage to simultaneously postulate the most insane scenario while invoking the incredulous tone of somebody offended by those who would think otherwise.

“No, seriously” is something of an admission of guilt.  The conspiracy theorist often invokes it in an effort to suspend reality for the purpose of the next few minutes.  They mistakenly believe that the very fact that they take this crap seriously obligates you to humor them by doing the same for even the slightest fraction of a second.

Silence is taken as an invitation to explain deeper and you certainly don’t want that.  The very nature of whatever is being suggested is at odds with all observable phenomena in the known universe.  For example, it might rest on the precept that world governments are able to flawlessly accomplish things.

I guess they just do stuff like this to throw us off the scent.

 Stage Four: You React 

You know that you should distract him with the old Scooby-Doo, “Hey, what’s that?!” before sprinting, but something stops you.  There is an itch in your brain at the incongruous strands of phantom connections that he is weaving together and if you nod along for another moment you fear that your cerebrum might turn against you.  So you formulate some kind of response and it is usually something fairly mild.

Pictured: Unabashed Lunacy (aka Alex Jones)

“But how would they keep the eyewitnesses from knowing it was really a missile and not an airplane?” you might ask.

Here he will shake his head, expressing with his most pedantic gesture just how little you really know.  “You can’t trust the testimony of eyewitnesses,” he will offer, “anybody can tell you that.”

“But isn’t your whole argument thus far just an exercise in stringing together the most inconsistent testimonials from the least credible sources?” you might respond.

It’s at this point that the dedicated conspiracy theorist will pull out the big guns.  He will trump the “No, Seriously” with the utterance that opens the floodgates of fallacy.  “You don’t understand,” he will say. 

 Stage Five: The Tapestry Widens 

Your innocent question was meant to deflate some particularly egregious lapse in logic but it has been mistaken for an invitation to be your Sherpa on Mt Bull Crap.  The conspiracy broadens to incorporate ever more disparate groups.  What might have begun as a discussion on gerrymandering has now expanded to include revelations on JFK, Bigfoot, aliens and the truth behind 9/11.

"...and that's how I know that Bigfoot killed JFK."

As the conversation continues you begin to wonder if everyone is in on this thing except the theorist himself.  He might argue that the moon landing was a hoax and thus imply that, among others, the worldwide science of astronomy would have to be in on it.  Somewhere in their ranks you would suspect someone would have some gambling debts or a mortgage that was underwater and be tempted to use this knowledge to make a few dollars.

As you silently do the math on exactly how many people are in on this world-shattering attempt to make the planet ready for our reptilian monarchs, he continues undeterred.  Motives only exist occasionally and when they do there seems no relation between them and the scale of the means.  Thousands or millions of your fellow citizens are all too willing to turn a blind eye toward unfathomable levels of deception for things like getting bills passed or covering up the sexual indiscretions of certain tycoons.

 Stage Six: Logic’s Last Stand 

At this point, whole governmental agencies are indicted from the janitors up.  Enitre disciplines of science are deemed to be “in on it”.  The testimonies of eyewitnesses ranging from dozens to millions are discarded because they were “probably threatened or paid off”.  Up to this point no real evidence has been offered beyond a bizarre string of semi-logical deductions.  The government has, it seems, managed to silence everyone except for a few astute bloggers and authors who are somehow able to spell out the entire vast conspiracy without the slightest hint of reprisal.

Jesse Ventura's payoff got lost in the mail, I guess... 

By now you’ve probably already manufactured an excuse to leave.  You’ve faked a phone call or severe internal hemorrhaging and politely excused yourself from the rabbit hole.  But sometimes this is not possible.  If you’re in a car with this person or perhaps punitively sentenced to sit next to them on an airplane there is no simple exit strategy.  If, for whatever reason, you can’t escape, you will eventually make the mistake of interjecting again.

This time you won’t use logic because you tried that and it didn’t work.  Instead you’ll find a glaring flaw in the internal workings of the purported conspiracy.  He might convince you that all geologists are “in on it” in act one and then offer the findings of some geologist in act three.  He might discount all known medical science to make one point but then offer the findings of a recent cancer research to demonize Dupont.

No matter the tone or nature of the question, the conversation will now take a decidedly adversarial turn.  If you’re still doubting the hypothesis at this point it can only mean that you’re either in on it yourself or too stupid to see what he has so clearly laid bare for you.  That’s okay because he’s seen this kind of opposition before.  He knows how to handle it.

 Stage Seven: The Loaded Question 

By now the labyrinth of lunacy has widened so much that you can’t keep track of which conspiracy he’s talking about.  Your futile attempts at connecting his world of secret councils and alien overlords with the one that you wake up in are being cast aside before you can even put them into words.  He is addressing massive contradictions in the theory before they even occur to you and he is doing so with the flimsiest band-aids available.

In his attempt to take control of the conversation, he will likely pose a question.  It will be carefully crafted to be both unanswerable and irrelevant.  The query will likely be highly technical and involve knowledge that neither you nor he possess.  It might take the form of a question about chemistry, physics, metallurgy, anatomy or astronomy.

Doubt his “Robert did it for his GI Joes” JFK conspiracy?  Well how do you explain the trajectory of this bullet?  And don’t go using that “neither of us knows the first damn thing about ballistics” excuse.  Doubt his “George W. Bush personally wired the twin towers with C4” theory?  Well how do you explain the presence of some chemical he can’t pronounce found amongst the wreckage of two buildings big enough to have a sample of virtually every chemical construct known to man in them?

"So how do you explain this seismological data then?"

It goes without saying, of course, that your inability to posit an alternate scenario on the spot that takes into account insane and unrelated elements is iron-clad proof of his accusations.

 Stage Eight: Castigation 

You are now the enemy.  You may not realize it, but you are very likely an agent of this vast corporate/government/spiritual/pagan/alien group of shadowy puppet-masters.  You’ve been hopelessly indoctrinated or directly compensated but either way you’ll never accept the truth.  Your fall from grace will likely come right after you notice a hole in his theory that is so big that even he has to wonder if he’s full of crap.

At this point, he will wash his hands of you and he will do so with a curious choice of words.  A person who clearly gets all of his information from the most random, unvetted, dubious, profiteering and mentally unhinged sources will accuse you of being gullible.  They will deprecate your insistence on supporting evidence or logical coherence as evidence that you are unable to think for yourself.

You (artist's rendering).

They might not use these exact words (they usually do) but you will receive some variation of “Well there’s no point in talking to somebody who just believes everything they’re told.”  Despite the overwhelming evidence offered to the contrary, i.e. you actively not believing what they are telling you, they will simply lament and hope that one day you will come to your senses.  You will be lumped in with the “sheeple” and forced to spend the rest of your life wondering if the singular is “Shperson” or “Sherson”.

Aaron Davies

www.blognoscor.blogspot.com

I find this difficult to say without coming off as a cult-leader, but you should follow me.  It’s easy to do and you’ll receive an email every time I post a new blog so I won’t have to come looking for you.